What word problem will you be bringing to PD for your sandbox project? If you’d like, please also share a link to your completed project so we can see what the finished product looks like!
This is a problem that I took from Regents Test Prep. My students do some volunteer work at the local animal shelter, so they loved this one!
Margie is responsible for buying a week’s supply of food and medication for the dogs and cats at a local shelter. The food and medication for each dog costs twice as much as those supplies for a cat. She needs to feed 164 cats and 24 dogs. Her budget is $4240. How much can Margie spend on each dog for food and medication?
In the past my advanced students have had problems with solving word problems about consecutive numbers. They enjoy working through them and think of them more as a puzzle each going about it a different way to solve. I think by introducing it in this format with the recipe it will enable them to see if more as a function/equation. I would do the lesson with the following word problem and then give them extension activity to create one with consecutive odd or even numbers to see how they go about solving it and would have them post their work on our ItsLearning page for their other classmates to see.
Word Problem: The sum of three consecutive numbers is 72. What is the smallest of these numbers?
I was thinking of using a word problem that has a bit too much or confusing information.
A basketball player made 5 out of every 6 foul shots attempted. If 42 foul shots were missed in the player’s career, how many total foul shots were made in the players career.
This kind of problem is confusing to my students. They always want to start with the player making 5 out of 6 shots. Really we can say that x/6 = 42 or the total number of shots made (x) / 6 needs to = 42. We can turn this around and say that 6 x 42 = x or the total number of four shots taken. We really don’t need to deal with the 5 shots and 1 missed. If we tried to multiply 5 x 42 = x we would still need to add the 42 missed shots to get the total number of foul shots taken.
I am still thinking what word problem I want to do since I have to consider the different level of intelligence of my students to make it just right for them.
I found a word problem in the forms of linear functions lesson. Students will write a program to find how many pounds of almonds one can buy given $30 to spend, walnuts are $3/lb, almonds cost $2/lb and the number of pounds of walnuts must be bought.
I will be teaching this PD to a varied level of 8th graders, so I wanted to start off simple and build from there. A local bakery shop has an upcoming event that will require them to bake several cakes. Each cake will need 2 eggs. How many eggs will be needed to bake 15 cakes?
Wanda has $5 0.00.If she makes a $23.00 purchase, she gets $27.00 back in change. If she makes a $25.00 purchase, she gets $25.00 back in change. If she makes a $40.00 purchase, she gets $10.00
back in change. If she makes a purchase of h dollars, how much change will she get back?
My code has a bug that I can’t find. Can anyone help me?
In a taco eating competition, Enrique can eat 3 tacos per minute. You are late to the competition and Enrique has a head start and has already been eating tacos for a few minutes. How many tacos do you need to eat each minute to win the competition in time?
Tacos/Minute (head start, competition time): (3*competition time)/(competition time-head start)
I didn’t have a particular problem that I needed or wanted to share, as I’m not teaching this subject matter any longer. However, I do see the value in sharing these projects to help others to come up with new and innovative ways to resolve complex problems within their various testing environments.
Manuel is making a picture frame for a 10 in. X 7 in. photo of him and his dog at the beach. He wants to make the frame 2 inches wide. If he cut the boards so that each one was the length of one of the 4 sides + 2 in, how many square inches of wood would he need?
The next day Manuel’s mom found a whole box of photos of Manuel’s grandparents. He wants to make frames for some of them and give it to them as a present. Can you write a function for making a frame for any size picture?
The problem is for students to calculate their tickets they receive for their behavior. The points for each ticket is as follows: yellow 30 points, white 1 point, green, 1 point.
Students have to create a program where they just have to input their numbers and have it generate a count for them.
I brought the following math problem:
Create a function that calculates the volume of a rectangular prism.